A couple basic Ram questions.

[Jhill]

I am helping my mom upgrade her ram (from 6 states away) She has an EMACHINES W6409.

According to the emachines website here it says she has 512MB DDR (1 × 512MB), 533MHz (PC4200). But when I go to crucial.com to buy a stick it says I need DDR2.

Why doesn't the emachines website just say ddr ram. Is it just an oversite. She really has ddr2 ram right?


Also if I add in a lower speed of 512mg ddr2 ram (such as ddr2 pc 3200) will it just make the whole gig run at a lower speed?


Thanks for any help. If I was there I could just look at it.

 

[SanDiegoPC]

Emachine is an inexpensive, entry level PC that probably has documentation that is on par with the hardware. Not trying to be sarcastic, but I've repaired a LOT of them over the past few years. LOTS.

The memory probably IS DDR2 but just not documented properly. Do yourself a favor though, and look at it & match what's there before buying replacement.

 

[Jhill]

Thanks, that's what I thought. It's probably just documented poorly on the website.

Do you know about what will happen if I add in a stick of lower speed (such as 3200)? I am sure it will probably work. Will it just make ALL the ram run at that lower speed?

 

[pallejr]

According to the chipset specs, it can handle both types of RAM. So it can go both ways. My first instinct is to trust the emachine page. If you follow SanDiegoPC's advice, you will come to know for sure

http://ati.de/products/radeonxpress200Intel/specs.html

 

[sutahz]

Get your mom to open up the computer and take a few pics. I'm sure the ram doesnt have a heatspreader so it'd only take a quarter second to see if its DDR1 or 2. As eMachines is a major corporation, I doubt they'd put overclocked memory in their systems. DDR1 stops at 400 officially. 533MHz tells me its DDR2.

 

[Jhill]

Originally posted by: sutahz
Get your mom to open up the computer and take a few pics. I'm sure the ram doesnt have a heatspreader so it'd only take a quarter second to see if its DDR1 or 2. As eMachines is a major corporation, I doubt they'd put overclocked memory in their systems. DDR1 stops at 400 officially. 533MHz tells me its DDR2.

Yeah thanks for the help. I'm pretty sure it's ddr2. A few other webpages that sells this machine specifies ddr2. You would think emachines would at least have in on their page.